Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

another of the girls grabbed her by the arm on her break.
    “Here,” the older girl had said, pushing a black ovoid pill into Holly’s palm. “Try this. It makes things easier.”
    Holly dry-swallowed the pill without looking at it or thinking about it. She didn’t want to think at all. After that, the night slid by and at quitting time she had over a hundred in tips alone. Four nights later she paid up her rent. The future had brightened.
    Before two months had passed, however, she was hooked on cocaine and pills and when the next month’s rent came due, she didn’t have it again. Her habits ate money like a hungry flame.
    Tony Montoro had finally fired her on a Tuesday night.
    “Come back if you clean up, doll,” he said with a serious face.
    Holly understood they were kind words. In truth, perhaps the first ones she’d heard in a long time. Walking the streets again, she eyed the girls who walked there with her. They had glazed eyes and painted faces. No one had heels less than three inches high.
    Holly opened her purse and sucked in all the special medications she had left inside it. When there was nothing left but makeup, she felt a little better and a little worse at the same time.
    An hour later she was still wandering the streets. By this time, she had decided to turn things around—to go into business for herself. She needed more money, she needed it fast, and she needed it easy. She knew how attractive young ladies in Las Vegas made things like that happen. She had to turn a trick. She’d had a number of bad boyfriends that had made her feel like a hooker, but she’d never really been one. Maybe this was the night to take that last step.
    Holly eyed the other streetwalkers, but didn’t want to try her first play with witnesses nearby. She didn’t want the pros to laugh at her. She stumbled down a street that was darker than the rest and waited until a big car came cruising along with two men in it. The car was weaving a bit, and she figured they were probably as high as she was. She glimpsed the passenger’s face. He didn’t look too old or too ugly. She flagged them down.
    To her surprise, the car swerved toward her. After a stunned second in the headlights, she scrambled to move out of the way. The car’s engine revved high, as if the driver were flooring it. Did they want to kill her? Shock melted into fear.
    The front tires twisted, throwing the car into a half spin. Sliding sideways, it hit the curb and flipped over. She threw herself out of the way, but what really saved her was a lamppost. The car plowed into it, sliding on its back.
    It was then that Holly recognized the car. It was purple and black. Made long ago when cars were heavier and longer and full of thick steel. It was Tony’s Cadillac.
    Holly got to her feet, shaking. She took quivering steps forward. Was Tony trying to kill her now?
    The passenger had been ejected and was lying on the sidewalk, motionless. The driver caught her attention first, however. It was Tony himself, the man in the silver suit who had fired her only an hour ago. He crawled out of his window. The jagged safety glass cut his hands but he kept crawling slowly, relentlessly.
    She walked close and stood over him. “Are you crazy, Tony?” she asked.
    Tony rolled up his eyes to look at her, and she saw
sand
burbling from his mouth. She thought at first it was vomit, but then she realized it really was
sand
. Some of it was wet and dark, but as more gushed out, it turned dry and seemed endless. It gushed from him as he lay there at her feet shivering and dying.
    The sand inside him was
dry
, she thought. Didn’t that mean there had to be an awful lot of it? Didn’t that mean it had to be fresh? It wasn’t possible. His eyes were open. They were bulging and every red capillary stood out on the round whites. He appeared to be just as surprised at his death as she was to witness it.
    At this point, I touched her shoulder. We both stopped walking. I looked into her face, frowning. She didn’t have the look of a liar, which I found very disturbing consideringthe insane nature of her story. She had the look of someone who was remembering something traumatic. She was staring at the street, lost.
    I told myself I shouldn’t doubt her. After all, hadn’t I just encountered some very strange people at the sanatorium? Wasn’t I using sunglasses as universal lock picks? How could I doubt Holly after what I’d seen?
    “How could he have been filled